The teams from Tripura and Manipur are out of the ongoing 3rd Hockey India Junior Women National Championship in the state capital because of low player strength. Among the 29 participating teams from across India, low team muscles of these two teams have affected their performance and both these teams are returning back to their native places.
According to both teams, this is for the first time, they performed with less number of players. The player limit for every team is 18 but Manipur Hockey and Tripura Hockey played with 14 and 11 teenage girls only.
It is to be noticed, a senior level tournament for the same match is going on at lucknow as well. For both these north eastern states, the division of players had been difficult because of this reason.
Manager of Tripura Hockey Manoj said, “Our players did not have substitute player option. Non-replacement made them exhausted while playing.”
Shockingly, when The Pioneer team interacted with the girls of these states it was revealed that none of the Tripura Hockey players hail from Tripura. All belong to Uttar Pradesh but are respresentating Tripura on the request on team manager.
“In our state, hockey’s scope is low. Guardians in the fear of theft are afraid to send their daughters training camps which are also not held regularly.
The performance of our junior boy’s team is also not upto the mark. For lucknow tournament too, we had to hire few girls from other states. We are funded only by the State Government,” said Manoj Kumar, Coach of Tripura Hockey.
Officials of Manipur Hockey brought their power puff school goer hockey girls without the financial support of Sports Authority of India (SAI) and their state government. Herojit Singh, Secretary of Manipur Hockey said, “No finance is availed to us from government and SAI. Moreover, many girls have participated in the North Eastern Games organized from April 8 to 12 because of which they could not come here.”
Manipur Hockey Captain Ashalata Chanu who played football since 2011 at local level and then joined hockey at SAI told The Pioneer, “There are only 4 junior players in
our team. Remaining are sub-juniors.This includes locals and SAI players. We lost two matches with our pool state teams.”